Poem of the Week by Duncan McNaughton

Happy Monday. This week's poem is from A Passage of Saint Devil by Duncan McNaughton (Talonbooks, 1976). There's no link because it doesn't show up on our site. But believe me, we have it, and it's beautiful. Stop by or call if you want to buy one.

Ode

Open if honor for love and art
vanishes in the precision

we dishonor, others imagine
observing constance when it is instance

we dread, and resemblant
let it wither as stone wore

out for the old ones after wood--
it was never meant to

stay in place forever, much less to offer
chance divers exercises in time

or collapse so nearly
merely extension. But the knots

you cord events
disturb the looming

areal circumvention, our
breath. Esotericism is never

more than the near perfect practice
of the real, string,

carpets, eventually
commerce, not trade but

transaction of persons the secret
invitation found as result of

donative impression,
gravitational prehension.